Ipswich high students provide hi-tech help for whale tracking

Sunday

The CEO and scientist at Ocean Alliance in Gloucester (whale.org) invented a device called Snotbot — a flying drone with a petri dish attached designed to help track whales.

“We fly our drone above the whale and capture ‘snot’ from its spout,” said Kerr. “We get actual cells from inside the whale’s lungs, so we can directly examine its DNA, microbiomes and hormones. And we do this without bothering the whale at all.”

Flying over an endangered species is a pretty complex task and one of the most important pieces of information that the pilot needs is the drone’s height above the water/whale. Most off-the-shelf drones have an altimeter but it is not accurate enough for the pilot’s needs. “Currently we have an observer on our ship observing the drone shouting out his/her guess of its height as I pilot the drone into place,” said Kerr. “ Not the ideal situation.”

Enter the Ipswich High School robotics team, the Tigers — known by its league-assigned number, 5459 — with its computer-aided design, 3D printing, computer programming and soundboards.

“We’d been designing, building and competing with robotics teams throughout the state. We immediately saw the connection between Iain’s needs and our work. So we met with Iain’s Ocean Alliance,” Roman Gadbois, the team’s project leader and a school choice student from Gloucester.

Excited to have a team of young engineers looking for a challenge, Kerr gave them an important problem to solve. He wanted his drone to continuously determine its exact height over water and report it to the pilot.

“There’s a sweet spot of 10 to 12 feet above the whale where we collect the most robust samples,” said Kerr. “Navigating to that height and holding it is tricky.”

Team 5459 took up the challenge and applied its engineering and robotics experience to a real-world problem. The team chose laser altimeter technology to determine the distance. “The other types of devices used with drones currently just aren’t accurate enough,” said Gadbois.

After measuring the drone’s altitude, the team needed to convey the measurements to the pilot. “We used radio controlled microcontroller boards to send the measurements wirelessly,” said team member Peyton Fitzgerald. “We added a sound board that listens to the microcontroller and converts the height measurements to audio. It constantly reports the altitude into the pilot’s headphones.”

Getting all of these devices to work together required electrical wiring, and soldering, as well as programming.

Finally, they needed to package all the components to withstand their environment. “We used computer-aided design (CAD) tools for design and 3D printer technology to create the actual casings,” said Annabelle Platt, mechanical lead on the robotics team. “One casing attaches the altimeter and microcontroller to the drone. The other clips onto the pilot’s belt and houses a microcontroller and sound board.”

The end result: a drone, hundreds of feet away, constantly communicates its altitude above the ocean audibly to the pilot through an earphone. The pilot can concentrate on flying the drone exactly where he wants it to go.

“They took the skills they are learning and had the desire to apply those skills to something real. And kids want something real,” Ipswich High School Principal David Dalton. “I’m excited that they did it. As the principal, I want to see the kids do more of that.”

Adult mentors Rick Gadbois and David Platt guide the robotics team.

“We provide direction, but we don’t do the work. That’s done by the high school team members,” said Platt.

Additional team members working on the project were Kendra Williams, George Gallagher and Pat Mattin.

The Ipswich High Schools Robotics Team 5459 (www.ipswich5459.com) consists of over 25 students from grades 8-12 working collaboratively with adult mentors to build working robots that compete at regional and International FIRST Robotics events.

“These burgeoning engineers solved a real-life problem for Ocean Alliance, and hopefully learned while doing so. It’s fantastic that local high school kids can contribute to this project — we are over the moon,” said Kerr.